” Though much has been written about Cagliostro, most of it is confined to articles in encyclopedias and magazines, or to descriptive paragraphs in works dealing with magic, freemasonry and the period in which he lived. This material may be describes as a footnote, which has been raised to the dignity of a page of history. […] It has been said that every book on Cagliostro must be a book against him. With this opinion I totally disagree. In choosing Cagliostro as the subject of an historical memoir I was guided at first, I admit, by the belief he was the arch-imposer he is popularly supposed to be. With his mystery, magic, and highly sensational career he seemed just the sort of picturesque personality I was in search of. The moment, however, I began to make my researches I was astonished to find how little foundation there was in point of fact for the popular conception. The deeper I went into the subject – how deep this has been the reader may gather from the Bibliography, which contains but a portion of the material I have sifted – the more convinced I became of the fallacy of this conception. “